“Fi-Hi-Hi/ The Black Shakers Song & Polka”
- Sheet music measuring 10 x 13 inches, 3 pp. Pencil markings of chords over third page
- New York City , 1851
New York City, 1851. Sheet music measuring 10 x 13 inches, 3 pp. Pencil markings of chords over third page. Some staining and a few small tears; overall excellent.. Sheet music for “Fi-Hi-Hi” or “The Black Shakers Song & Polka”, a track written by Even Horn and originally performed by the Fellows Minstrels. The Fellows, who are also called on the cover “Fellows Ethiopean [sic] Troupe”, were a New York City-based minstrel group who briefly ran Fellow’s Opera House on Broadway just above Canal Street. The singer of this tune, whose girlfriend has “gone away to Leb’non state”—perhaps Mount Lebanon, New York, or Lebanon, Ohio—asks, “Oh! pity me ye shakers all/ And tell me where I’ll find her”.
The United Society of Believers, or Shakers, are an egalitarian and millenarian Christian sect who arrived in colonial America in the 1770s and appalled early Americans with their singing and dancing. Interestingly, at least one researcher has suspected a connection between Shaker and minstrel song and dance; for one, a popular 1840s Shaker song which goes, “Hop up and jump up and whirl round, whirl round” makes at least an interesting comparison with “Jump Jim Crow’s” “Wheel about, turn about, an’ do jus’ so”.[1] Moreover, Shaker communities were open to anyone who was willing to commit to a celibate, communal life, regardless of race or gender. For instance, Mount Lebanon documented having Black members during its early days in the late 1700s,[2] and in 1819 the Shakers at South Union, Kentucky, freed those enslaved by their slaver converts.[1]
We find eighteen other physical copies of “Fi-Hi-Hi” on OCLC. Of interest to historians of blackface minstrelsy and American theater.
[1] Anne Grimes, “Possible Relationship between ‘Jump Him Crow’ and Shaker Songs”, Midwest Folklore 3, no. 1 (Spring 1953), 47–57.
[2] “African American Shakers: In the Berkshires and Beyond”, Hancock Shaker Village, accessed March 6, 2025, https://hancockshakervillage.org/online-exhibitions/african-american-shakers-berkshires/.
The United Society of Believers, or Shakers, are an egalitarian and millenarian Christian sect who arrived in colonial America in the 1770s and appalled early Americans with their singing and dancing. Interestingly, at least one researcher has suspected a connection between Shaker and minstrel song and dance; for one, a popular 1840s Shaker song which goes, “Hop up and jump up and whirl round, whirl round” makes at least an interesting comparison with “Jump Jim Crow’s” “Wheel about, turn about, an’ do jus’ so”.[1] Moreover, Shaker communities were open to anyone who was willing to commit to a celibate, communal life, regardless of race or gender. For instance, Mount Lebanon documented having Black members during its early days in the late 1700s,[2] and in 1819 the Shakers at South Union, Kentucky, freed those enslaved by their slaver converts.[1]
We find eighteen other physical copies of “Fi-Hi-Hi” on OCLC. Of interest to historians of blackface minstrelsy and American theater.
[1] Anne Grimes, “Possible Relationship between ‘Jump Him Crow’ and Shaker Songs”, Midwest Folklore 3, no. 1 (Spring 1953), 47–57.
[2] “African American Shakers: In the Berkshires and Beyond”, Hancock Shaker Village, accessed March 6, 2025, https://hancockshakervillage.org/online-exhibitions/african-american-shakers-berkshires/.